42 Time November 8/November 15, 2021
‘THEY CHOSE IN
THAT MOMENT TO
SEE THEMSELVES
AS PART OF
CIVIL SOCIETY.’
—Timothy Snyder, historianone-third of Fortune’s 100 largest companies: Walmart and Cowen Inc.,
Johnson & Johnson and Comcast, Blackstone Group and American Air-
lines. Disney’s Bob Iger rolled out of bed at 4 a.m. Pacific time to join, ac-
companied by a large mug of coffee. (Sonnenfeld, who promised the par-
ticipants confidentiality, declined to disclose or confirm their names, but
TIME spoke with more than a dozen people on the call, who confirmed
their and others’ participation.)
The meeting began with a presentation from Sonnenfeld’s Yale col-
league Timothy Snyder, the prominent historian of authoritarianism and
author of On Tyranny. Snyder did not beat around the bush. What they
were witnessing, he said, was the beginning of a coup attempt.
“I went through it point by point, in a methodical way,” recalls Snyder,
who has never previously discussed the episode. “Historically speaking,
democracies are usually overthrown from the inside, and it is very com-
mon for an election to be the trigger for a head of state or government to
declare some kind of emergency in which the normal rules do not apply.
This is a pattern we know, and the name for this is a coup d’état.” What was
crucial, Snyder said, was for civil society to respond quickly and clearly.
And business leaders, he noted, have been among the most important
groups in determining whether such attempts succeeded in other coun-
tries. “If you are going to defeat a coup, you have to move right away,” he
says. “The timing and the clarity of response are very, very important.”
A lively discussion ensued. Some of the more conservative execu-
tives, such as Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, wondered if the
threat was being overstated, or echoed Trump’s view that late ballots in
Pennsylvania seemed suspicious. Yet others corrected them, pointing out
that COVID-19 had led to a flood of mail-in ballots that by law could
not be counted until the polls closed. By the end of the hour, the group
had come to agreement that their normal political goals—lower taxes,
less regulation—weren’t worth much without a stable democracy under-
pinning them. “The market economy works because of the bedrock foun-
dation of the rule of law, the peaceful succession of power and the reserve
currency of the U.S. dollar, and all of these things were potentially at risk,”
former Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer tells TIME. “CEOs are nor-
mally hesitant to get involved in political issues, but I would argue that
this was a fundamental business issue.”
The group agreed on the elements of a statement to be released as soon
as media organizations called the election. It would congratulate the win-
ner and laud the unprecedented voter turnout; call for any disputes to
be based on evidence and brought through the normal channels; observe
that no such evidence had emerged; and insist on an orderly transition.
Midday on Nov. 7, when the election was finally called, the BRT imme-
diately released a version of the statement formulated on Zoom. It was
followed quickly by other trade groups, corporations and political lead-
ers around the world, all echoing the same clear and decisive language
confirming the election result.
Sonnenfeld thought the hastily convened “Business Leaders for Na-
tional Unity,” as he’d grandly dubbed the 7 a.m. call, would be a one-off.
But Trump’s effort to overturn the election persisted. So in the ensuing
weeks, the professor called the executives together again and again, to
address Trump’s attempt to interfere with Georgia’s vote count and the
Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. “This was an event which violated those ritu-
als of America and created a visceral reaction,” Nick Pinchuk, CEO of the
Kenosha, Wis.–based toolmaker Snap-on, tells TIME. “Talking about this,
it kind of transformed from the realm of politics to the realm of civic duty.
CEOs wanted to speak out about this, and Jeff gave us a way to do that.”
To Sonnenfeld, the effort—much of which has not been previously
reported—underlined a generational shift taking place in the collective
Nation
civic attitudes of the CEO class. Its effects are ev-
ident in Washington, where Big Business’s long-
time alliance with the Republican Party is foun-
dering. Congressional Republicans have divorced
the Chamber of Commerce; the GOP’s corporate
fundraising is diminished; Fox News anchors and
conservative firebrands rant about “woke capital”
and call for punitive, anti-free-market policies in
retaliation. Many of the companies and business
groups that implacably resisted Barack Obama
have proved surprisingly friendly to Biden, back-
ing portions of his big-spending domestic agenda
and supporting his COVID-19 mandates for pri-
vate companies. Political observers of both parties
have tended to attribute these developments to the
pressures companies face, whether externally from
consumers or internally from their employees. But
Sonnenfeld, who is in a position to know, argues
that just as much of it comes from the changing
views of the CEOs themselves.
Snyder, the scholar of authoritarianism, be-
lieves the CEOs’ intervention was crucial in en-
suring Trump left office on schedule, if not blood-
lessly. “If business leaders had just drifted along